Saturday, 9 June 2012

CRICINFO DEBUT: OLE MORTENSEN PROFILE

“You need a big heart to bowl quick. It’s hard
work.”

Ole Mortensen

For a teenager from Staffordshire keen to watch first-class
cricket in the second half of the 1980s, Derbyshire was the natural
destination, the logical team to support. This was even more the case after
they signed a deal with Staffordshire Moorlands District Council to play some
home Sunday League games on ‘foreign’ soil: at Leek, Checkley, Cheadle and
Knypersley. I duly persuaded my Dad – still keeping wicket for Leycett then
although right at the end of his cricket-playing days – that we should go and
watch. Given the lack of elegance and/or genius among the Derby batting ranks (John Morris was aesthetically the easiest on the eye; Kim Barnett, Peter Bowler, and Chris Adams all effective) the primary attraction
was the ferocious pace of the scattergun Devon Malcolm and fluid, feline Michael
Holding (then later Ian Bishop, quite awesome before his stress fractures).

However, what most compelled my young imagination was a
slightly inelegant, glowering Dane, a bustling heart-on-sleeve merchant whose
skill and exoticism (a relative concept, of course) was utterly captivating.
Bowling from quite wide on the crease and almost always pitching the ball up,
the gunslinger Mortensen would get splice-thudding bounce and late away swing
at a lively fast-medium. Seared into my memory is the sight of the ball hitting
the seam on the grassy Derby surface and zipping over top of off peg, the batsman
a Sardine tin wondering why his tuck off the hips into square leg hadn’t
materialized, as the red pill, now halfway to the ‘keeper (foghorn-voiced and
Danish-named Karl Krikken), canted itself to the perfect angle to swing a touch
before thwacking in to the mitts. Decent.

Perhaps thought of as a cult figure – and, let’s face it,
there haven’t been too many world-class Scandinavian pacemen – it would be a
grave error to remember the primal appeals and occasionally gauche sledging
(his skipper, Kim Barnett recalls a favourite line of the Dane’s, “do you know
how to use that bat?” being said to DI Gower on 120 not out, who pointed to the
scoreboard) and to construe these idiosyncrasies as traits of some sort of
buffoonish character. Not so. Barnett, his skipper for the twelve years he
spent in county cricket, rated him very, very highly. Of the 29 seamers who
debuted for England between 1983 and 1994*, the time Mortensen was with the
Peakites, Barnett believes only Caddick and Fraser were better bowlers, with
Neil Foster, Gladstone Small and Steve Watkin as ‘maybes’.

Anyway, it was looking back at these young memories and one
of the first cricketing heroes of mine that led to my first article for
Cricinfo. You can read the article here:

Suffice to say Ole was a charming and ego-free bloke,
respectfully listening when I spoke, answering the questions thoughtfully and
being humble about what he had achieved in the game. I buttonholed Michael
Holding at TrentBridge and asked him about him, and he
was full of praise for both his character and ability. The two remain friends
and the Jamaican will be popping over to Denmark in September for a visit.

Ole, a Liverpool supporter, emailed me today, offering “a
quick delivery on off stump to say I have read the article with a great big
smile on my face” and telling me that he would be supporting England against the French after Denmark’s
surprise win over the Dutch, the European country that, in cricketing terms, has
left the Danes behind.

Denmark, 1986

The 1980s and 1990s were the golden era of Danish football:
in the European Championships of 1992, they famously replaced Yugoslavia, a nation coming apart at the seams,
and beat Germany
2-0 in Gothenburg. But the better team was the so-called ‘Danish Dynamite’ of
1986, the team of Michael Laudrup, Preben Elkjaer, Frank Arnesen, Soren Lerby, Morten
and Jesper Olsen, a team so beloved of football romantics and regularly bracketed
with the Hungarians of the 1950s, Dutch of the 1970s and Brazil of 1982 as
among the great purveyors of the beautiful game never to have won a trophy. Indeed,
their 4-2 victory over Russia
on June 5, 1985 is considered the true zenith of Danish football.

Well, the true zenith of Danish cricket was undoubtedly the
big seamer from Copenhagen, loved by teammates and supporters alike, and
probably equal first with Brian Lara as my favourite-ever cricketer.